Click the image to go to a great write up on the sadness of poorly painted miniatures at Hungry Ghosts Chaos Squats of Khorne

The summertime festivals of Montreal have come and gone. Even though there may be a few more festivals that the 9to5 Crew finds themselves at, they are mostly at out of town locations for the time being.

That means that it’s time to play D&D more.

Miniature figurines are not a “must have” in most campaigns. They were much more important in 4th Edition since combat in 4e was basically a tactical boardgame with all sorts of rules hinging on movement and placement. Even then, if you were totally dedicated to not using miniatures you could just use a penny or a piece of popcorn or something to represent your dude moving around the play area.

However, and maybe this is just because of the conditioning that I’ve experienced with video games, having the right little guy representing my character is pretty important.

Think about nearly any video game where you create your character. This happens in sports games, wrestling games and, most often, RPGs. You select the stats of your dude (which takes about 5 minutes) and then you create their look (which takes about 4 hours). The more detailed the character creation options are, the longer you spend tweaking literally every minute detail of your character.

“How far apart should his eyes be in relation to the length of the bridge of his nose.” That’s a thought that I’ve had. It is not a thought that anyone outside of maybe professional statue makers has ever had before some time in the 2000s when it became an option in character creation. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Psych out! You thought this was going to be our Star Wars parody didn’t you? Wrong monstertrucker! We’re going to be gaming again! Last time, I was the DM and it was a post apocalyptic zombie fest (that kind of went awry). Literally the only games I’ve ever really DM’d have involved the walking dead. Jon on the other hand is a Class 4 Dungeon Master. I’m guessing. I don’t know.

(I do know and he has a little guild membership card in his wallet, next to a picture of the Queen).

Jon’s forté is definitely sword and sorcery. I’m excited to see what he has in store for the crew.

As though I wasn’t head writer on this storyline and its a mystery to me.

So Scott has the plague or something so this one is no Scotts allowed! Your bi-weekly dose of a bunch of Montreal geeks shooting the shit is ready for your earholes. I don’t have very much to talk about in this post so I’m going to use this little space to thank our loyal (and ever so slowly growing) fanbase for sticking with us for an astonishing 56 episodes so far (forget about the lost episodes!). If you like what we’re doing seriously share us and like us on Facebook and do good things to us on iTunes. Get ready! Go!

Here it is, the grand finale… the buildup and confrontation with the demi-lich Acererak. Here is the story so far:Part 1Part 2Part 3

In the next area there is a rainbow staircase leading up to a magical door. I won’t tell you exactly how we got through this door, not because I don’t remember, but because I want you to figure it out for yourself when the time comes. However, part us figuring out this room involved teleporting one the characters to the entrance of the dungeon, naked. Why is he naked? His gear gets teleported somewhere else. Where? Read on, we’ll get to it. Sprocket is teleported away and presumably goes off to live the rest of her life as a sad, ugly little naked gnome.

After dealing with the magic door we make it into what is clearly the tomb of the demi lich. Written in platinum above the tomb are the words “Here Lies the Demi-Lich Acererak, Suck My Dick”. Or it may as well have at this point. In this room there is a set of iron armor in each of the four corners, a large sealed jar, two chests and the tomb itself. We pop open both chests, temporarily forgetting where we are. In one chest is 10,000 platinum pieces, in the other there are thousands of poisonous needles that kill Bernadette McGillicuddy. We clearly forgot to disarm trap or something. We come back to our senses and set in motion the golden rule and search the shit out of everything. We discover two things. First, the big jar contains a goddamned Ifrit. Let’s not fuck with that. Second, one of the suits of armor conceals a hidden passage. What do we do then? We keep fucking going. We don’t fuck with the jar, we don’t fuck with the tomb, we don’t fuck with anything. I cannot stress this enough. Don’t fuck around with anything that might be dangerous because it will fucking kill you. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

This thing isn’t even in the article, but it runs you over after a gas knocks you out.

In case you are wondering what you’ve missed, make sure you read the first two parts of our journey into the Tomb of Horrors:Part 1Part 2

And now, what was going to be the epic conclusion of 9to5 (dot cc)’s delve into the depths of Evil and a final confrontation with the demi lich Acererak (I think it’s worth noting that just about every player at the table had a different way of pronouncing his name). Why is it not the epic conclusion? When I wrote this all out it was nearly 3000 words long, which is too long for your fun time internet reading experiences. So I chopped it into two. However, you can read this and rest assured that the 4th part is already written. It’ll be up next week. Cross my heart. As always Jono (the DM) has added his insights in blue.

So where were we? Oh yes, that’s right, completely stuck at this weird altar/temple place, with images of people doing everyday activities (presumably reaping and sowing and whatever non-Adventurer people in Dungeons & Dragons do) except, get this, all the people have no flesh! Creepy. Finally we remember the all-important rule of Tomb of Horrors: fucking checking everything with every ability that lets you check anything. What does that mean? It means you cast Detect Magic, Detect Trap, Detect Secret Door all the time, every time. That last one was our mistake. We were scouring the walls, floors and ceilings looking for traps, but for some reason we forgot to look for Secret Doors. Eventually we realized our error and found a door to the next corridor.

Yeah, that room was one of the places where Gary decided to make wacky dungeon dressing. There were portraits of good-aligned Gods and people doing normal things. In the book, it’s revealed that the players are supposed to wonder if maybe Acererak isn’t so evil. I think in the thousands of times this module was ran that happened all of never. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Wow, it’s been a long time since I wrote part 1 of the Tomb of Horrors playthrough and honestly, the whole thing is getting a little blurry in my mind. The fact that I may or may not (read: was definitely) drunk at this stage has nothing to do with it. As before Jon (who was our Dungeon Master) is in blue. So, where were we?

This was a great night. There were 6 (I think) players, more than at the first session, and word had spread about how nonsense the whole thing was so we could just get into it. Delightful.

Oh yeah, the magical dancing scimitar wielding skeleton. Now, I have no way of actually knowing whether or not he was actually dancing but when Jono showed off the carefully illustrated Figure 13D, it certainly looks like he’s dancing, doesn’t it? It sure does.

Fuck the dancing giant dual-scimitar wielding skeleton (10HD 32hp AC2 2×2-12dam), you’re forgetting about the lever trap room. The idiots all went through a portal without properly activating it first and got teleported into a room that was a 10x10x10 cube. No visible exits, 3 levers on the wall. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that the Tomb is legendary for. The levers each can be pushed, pulled, and shifted up, down, left and right. One combination opens the whole floor to a 100ft drop with a pit filled with spikes and one combination opens a tiny hole in the ceiling to escape through. The gang managed to expect the floor to give way, so when they fucked it up and opened the trap they survived. They then managed to escape with no one dying. I was so, so proud. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

An “adventure”… yeah right Gary. That’s like when Pinhead says he’ll provide you ultimate pleasure.

It’s not Monday but who cares?

So, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m going to be engaging in some classic late 70s-80s pop-culture geek fandom. The goal being to play old games, watch old movies and broaden the scope of my geeky historical knowledge. Some of these things I will have watched or played before and some I’ve never even been exposed to. The first historical artifact that I’m going to peruse is the 1978 Dungeons & Dragons module The Tomb of Horrors. There are better sources than this website for the history of this notorious D&D module but to sum it up: Gary Gygax was sick of D&D players not dying in his dungeons, so he made a dungeon to kill off players as quickly as he could.

Originally I planned on simply reading through the module and giving the good readers my perspective, however when Jon heard about this he got giddy with glee, clapping his hands and dancing a jig. Tomb of Horrors is one of the most notoriously unfair and lethal D&D campaigns ever created. Filled with “fuck you, you’re dead now” moments from start to finish. It is the stuff of D&D legend and he had never had the chance to run it for a group of players. He forbid me from reading the module (which I respected) and then ran the tomb for us. For that reason, he’ll be commenting on the narrative. He’ll be writing in blue. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…